CPNE media training: Disaster reporting lacks investigation, says expert

Noreen Haider believes that reporters don't dig into the matter for the actual cause of disaster

KARACHI: Politicians look for the next elections not the next generation in the development process and, to make matters worse, reporters cannot care any less, said reporter and expert on disaster reporting Noreen Haider on Wednesday.

"We just want to complete megaprojects like the metro bus service in Lahore in a record time period," she said, adding that the government did not care to check the quality of material that is used to construct such projects. On top of that, she said, no reporter bothers to investigate into such issues.



She was addressing the journalists on the third day of a media training programme co-organised by the Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors (CPNE) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on Wednesday. The session was titled 'Development and Disaster Reporting: Concepts and Methodologies'.

Talking about 'disaster reporting', Haider spoke about how little investigation is conducted when a calamity takes place. This results in a free pass for the politicians whose mismanagement of disasters and calamities goes ignored.

Haider was of the view that hazards turn into disasters due to lack of planning. This is something that journalists do not dig into and it goes unreported. "Reporters just copy and paste each other's stories," she said. "They don't dig into for the actual cause of the disaster."

She cited the earthquake of October 8, 2005, as an example of recklessness on the part of planners. "The earthquake did not kill the people," she said. "The construction on the sloppy mountains did." Referring to the massive death toll, she lamented how the construction of walls that were not integrated with each other went ignored. It was because of these walls that the roofs collapsed and resulted in the tragic deaths of as many as 70,000 people, she said. Yet, no journalist cared to look into the matter.

Speaking of today's concerns, Haider mentioned the alarming levels of contamination in the river water. "Ravi has become a sewage dump", she said. "After the Shahdara district in the northern suburb of Lahore, the river water turns black because of toxic chemicals and arsenic waste product that is fatal for human consumption."

According to Haider, when this water gets supplied for irrigation it becomes a slow-moving disaster for the society. "Unfortunately, reporters and editors remain asleep until a disaster takes several lives."

Calling the floods and droughts the major natural hazards of Pakistan, Haider reflected on how unfortunate it is that half of the year, people of Sindh, Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa kept drowning in floods and during the other half, these same provinces crave for water.

This, again, is because the politicians did not manage our river system properly and the journalists chose to continue ignoring.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 20^th, 2014.